Better equipment saves time, provides more opportunities

The Computer Aided Technology department recently received a grant from the college for much needed new equipment, said John Helton, department chair for computer aided technology.

The grant money went for two new 42-inch printers — one of which has a scanner on it — plus several new digital cameras and a 3D scanner.

“We’ve needed this for a while,” Helton said. “We have been limited to only 24-inches wide. And a lot of our students’ architectural projects are larger than that.”

Akram Taghavi-Burris, professor of computer aided technology, was also pleased with the new equipment.

“We got the new digital cameras for our digital imaging class, and they will probably also be used for our digital video editing classes as well,” Taghavi-Burris said.

“We wanted to have cameras available for students to check out, but we only had one or two, and they were such high-end cameras that they were not practical for students to go and take pictures with,” she said.

“So we got some smaller digital cameras that they could check out, go do an assignment, and bring it back.”

The 3D scanner is going to be very helpful with the game design and animation programs, because it will enable students to scan an object, and make a digital copy in 3D instead of modeling it from scratch, which will save a lot of time, Taghavi-Burris said.

“Students spend so many hours modeling objects that it takes away from actually animating or programming a game.”